Ash5in Laurel Means's edition of medieval lunar astrology manuscripts (1993).
Ashmolein Manzalaoui's 1977 study.
+ This copy opens with list of chapters, akin to a table of contents, on folios 2r-3r, with alternating red and blue initials. Thereafter chapters are signalled with a three-line blue lombard with red flourishes and a rubricated title, matching the table of contents.
The Art of Nombrynge,
The tables are followed by an explanatory text on folios 68v-69r which explains that This table is ordeyned for þe meridian of Oxenford . where þe moder of v
, and which gives the 13 June 1429 as an example.
Sanguinnius,
Flemnaticus,
Melancolicus,
Colera rubia,
Sanguinneus niger, and the final heading
Alle the 3 signes that ben of oone. This final section is followed by a description of the zodiac in groups of three.
accordaunce thei maken oon triplicitee
Decoration). The second part contains nine integrated tables and one full-page table (fol. 109r). The same hand as item 7 has numbered the paragraphs and tables from 1-29. On this text in MS Ashmole 396, see Means (1992).
athat has not been executed (fol. 89r). The first five sections open with similar gaps for unexecuted initials, though the rubricated running titles have been added.
notaannotations are also made throughout. +
The same hand annotates the explanatory text of item 2, with a note on the meridian of Oxford (fol. 68v); item 10, with a note on Aschenden's book (fol. 93r); item 11, with a note de matromonius
(fol. 152v) and others;
An addition to item 2 is added at the end of the text, in a contemporary hand but different to the scribe (fol. 69r).
+The blank folio 69v has been annotated in a sixteenth century humanist hand with a note in Latin on the astrological date and time of the birth of the son of Lord John Zowche on 10 December 1564.
+A fifteenth century hand annotates item 11 with eleven notes, for instance to the authour of this booke
(fol. 180r), de maritis
(fol. 181r), and who ther on shall be ryche or no
(fol. 181v). The same hand leaves one note in items 13 (fol. 191r) and 14 (fol. 193r-v), and throughout item 15.
Calculations are made in the margins of folios 53r, and on the stub after folio 103.
+Erased and smudged annotations on folio 147v.
+A later hand has copied part of the indenture from the front flyleaf onto the back flyleaf.
Late seventeenth-century calf binding over pasteboards, typical of Elias Ashmole's style. The edges of both boards are decorated with concentric tool framing. There are two clasps anchored to the upper board with three pins, on leather fore-edge flaps which are reinforced with parchment. Each clasp contains Ashmole's coat of arms. The facing catch plates are anchored to the lower board with three pins. The board edges are tooled with a repeating zig-zag pattern, also typical of Ashmole's bindings. The sewing supports are laced into the boards using shortened single-hole lacing without channels.
+The spine shows five raised sewing supports covering thick cords, without end bands. The binding has been rebacked since entering the Bodleian's collection, and only the second spine panel (containing Ashmole's coat of arms with gold tooling around the margins) remains, now adhered to the spine covering in the same place. The spine is now covered in a separate piece of leather from the boards, of the same colour, that extends under the board-covers. The panels on the spine are decorated with the same style of concentric tool framing as the boards. The shelf mark ASH. 396
is embossed on the third spine panel, in a typeset that is similar, but not identical, to Ashmole's typeset (varying in the height of letters and thickness of vertical strokes in characters A
and 9
). The signature W 2.2.57
is recorded on the inside of the lower board, likely the date of rebacking and initial of the bookbinder.
Electionary, Lunary, Destinary, and Questionary: Toward Defining Categories of Middle English Prognostic Material,
The Art of Nombrynge,